The growing season is off to a rather good start this year with near no late season cold and enough moisture to help planted crops germinate. The featured chart presents accumulated growing degree days for Ames since mid April. This year's accumulation is plotted along with last year's as well as the climatological range and simple average. The bottom panel shows the accumulated departure from average. The recent May warmth can be seen with accumulated positive departures increasing. The only downside has been the below average rainfall, but dry conditions are helpful for making planting progress. The good news is that better chances of rain will be coming next week and temperatures look to remain well above freezing for the state for the foreseeable future.

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